The team at Andreesen Horowitz, however, are not among these stupid rich people. If anything, they have disrupted the standard operating procedure among their peers by outsmarting them, and the nature of how they have outsmarted their peers is strongly connected to an appetite for attaching high valuations to small groups of really smart people. Their organizational M.O. has been the exact opposite of bargain-bin talent hunting, which is why this whole Hacker Rank thing comes off so weird to me.
I want to be clear that I don't think A16Z is up to anything evil. Just something sneaky (which is fun!). These are smart people, and for them to publicly engage with the hacker community in this manner is indicative of some sort of really smart hypothesis being tested.
Building organizations is expensive, unpredictable and takes a long time. Buying organizations is more expensive in the short term, but also far more predictable and much faster. So if you have more money than time and need an organization to get something done, buying one is far more rational than "paying a clueless but competent nerd peanuts".
I'm not saying a16z is doing that here, btw. I'm just saying that you're wrong.
Why acquihire someone who knows how much they can ask if you can pay close to nothing to that test website (it's a genetic service) and get a clueless buy competent nerd that will be glad to work alone on a project for peanuts?
That's why we're poor and they have "unlimited capital"